Baseball Headline

Thursday April 4, 2013Florida Baseball Travels To Magnolia State For Weekend Set At No. 17 Mississippi State

Florida (14-16/4-5 SEC)
hits the road for its second of five SEC series away from Gainesville when it
visits No. 17 Mississippi State (24-8/3-6 SEC) for three games starting on
Friday night at Dudy Noble Field. Game times this weekend are at 7:30 p.m. ET
on Friday, 4 p.m. ET on Saturday and 2:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Both the series opener and finale between the
Gators and Bulldogs will be carried live on GatorVision. Bernie Guenther and
Ronnie Rantz will broadcast Saturday’s game at for CSS, which will be
carried on Cox Sports Channel 259 and Channel 1259 HD in Gainesville. Adam
Schick and Bob White will call the action for the Gator IMG Sports
Network this weekend, live audio and stats will be available on GatorZone.com and fans can also
follow updates of each game on @GatorZoneBB, the official Twitter account of
the Gator baseball program.

On Tuesday night, Florida
scored twice in the seventh inning to overcome a 3-2 deficit and added an
insurance run in the eighth in a 5-3 victory over UCF at McKethan Stadium to
raise its winning streak to three games. Meanwhile, Mississippi State snapped a
4-4 tie with two runs in the ninth to grab a 6-4 road win at South Alabama.

In SEC play,UF
fell to No. 10 Kentucky twice on the opening league weekend at McKethan Stadium
and then was on the short end of a 2-1 series at No. 2 Vanderbilt before taking
two of three games from No. 11 Ole Miss. MSU is seeking its first series
triumph in league play after being defeated by No. 2 LSU at home (L, L, W), No.
8 Kentucky in Lexington (W, L, L) and No. 11 Arkansas in Fayetteville (L, W,
L).

Junior right-hander Jonathon
Crawford (Okeechobee, Fla.) (1-4, 4.46), the most recent SEC Pitcher of the
Week, will
begin the series against Bulldog senior left-hander Luis Pollorena (4-1, 3.34).
Crawford fired a two-hit shutout to down No. 11 Ole Miss last Saturday, with a
season-high eight strikeouts and two walks. The righty has registered a
team-high 34 strikeouts in 42.1 innings of work and has worked at least six
innings in his last five starts.

Freshman southpaw Danny Young (Boca
Raton, Fla.) (1-2, 3.12) will make his first road start on Saturday afternoon
against MSU senior righty Kendall Graveman (3-2, 2.43). Young collected his
first win in his SEC starting debut last Sunday, when he limited Ole Miss to
one hit in 5.1 scoreless innings.

Neither the Gators or Bulldogs have announced
a starter for Sunday’s matchup yet.

Quick Hits About the Gators

·Florida
came from behind on Tuesday night to defeat UCF, 5-3, to sweep the teams’
two-game season series.

·The Gators’ longest winning streak of the season, a
four-game stretch from March 2-8, featured two wins apiece over No. 21 Miami
(FL) and Jacksonville.

·Florida
has played the toughest schedule to date in the nation, as its opponents have a
combined record of 562-209 (.729).

·UF
will be playing its fourth SEC series and the previous three have come down to
a decisive third game (1-2 record).

·All
nine league contests the Gators have played so far have been against ranked
teams: No. 10 Kentucky (1-2), at No. 2 Vanderbilt (1-2) and No. 11 Ole Miss
(2-1).

·Florida
is 6-8 (.429) versus top-25 opponents this season and is 89-71 (.556) in Kevin
O’Sullivan’s six-year tenure. UF is 1-2 (.333) away from Gainesville in
road games against ranked foes in 2013 and is 31-29 (.517) under O’Sullivan.

·Sophomore
C Taylor Gushue (Boca Raton, Fla.) (.276) enters the weekend on a
career-high six-game hitting streak in which he is 7-for-20 (.350) with six
runs, three RBI and two doubles.

·Senior
1B Vickash Ramjit (Miami, Fla.) (.294) was a team-high 5-for-12 (.417)
over the three games with Ole Miss, including a two-run homer on Sunday.

·Sophomore
OF Justin Shafer (Lake Wales, Fla.) (.325) leads the SEC with 12 doubles
and is coming off of a 5-for-13 (.385) weekend in which he scored a team-high
four runs.

·The
Gator pitching staff compiled an ERA of 0.93 in the series with the Rebels,
highlighted by consecutive shutouts on Saturday and Sunday for the first time
since March 10 & 12, 2010. Ole Miss batted just .140 (13-for-93) and was
out-scored by the Gators, 14-4.

·Crawford
became the first Gator hurler to be named the SEC Pitcher of the Week since
Hudson Randall in 2011 by tossing a two-hit shutout last Saturday. He started
game two with MSU last May (loss - 4.0 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 3 K, 2 BB).

·Sophomore
RHP Johnny Magliozzi (East Milton, Mass.) (2-1, 1.78) worked 3.2
scoreless innings in the finale with the Rebels to secure the save and then had
a perfect ninth to preserve Tuesday’s win over UCF for his sixth save in seven
opportunities.

·The
Gators are 7-7 (.500) when playing error-free baseball this year, including the
last two outings, and sport an 8-3 (.727) mark when scoring in the first inning.

·UF
is 26-of-40 (.650) on the basepaths this spring, led by five thefts by freshman
OF Harrison Bader (Bronxville, N.Y.) (.275) and three by five different
players.

Series Nuggets

O’Sullivan is 10-3 (.769) against Mississippi State,
7-2 (.778) in Gainesville, 2-1 (.667) in Starkville and 1-0 (1.000) at the SEC Tournament
in Hoover, Ala.

The Gators have taken eight of their last 11
regular-season series versus the Bulldogs since 2000. Florida enjoyed a run of
five-consecutive triumphs from 2001-05, MSU posted a pair of 2-1 decisions in
2006 & 2007 and the Gators have won the last three with a sweep in 2010 and
2-1 victories the last two seasons.

The teams have met seven times since the most
recent encounter in Starkville on April 10, 2011. UF posted a 7-5 victory at
the SEC Tourney on May 25, 2011, emerged on top in a classic NCAA Gainesville
Super Regional from June 10-12, 2011, and claimed two of the three meetings
between May 11-13, 2012, at McKethan Stadium.

2012 Series Recap

Florida captured two out of three games over
No. 25 Mississippi State at McKethan Stadium from May 11-13, 2012. In a
tightly-contested series, UF’s pitching staff was brilliant against the
Bulldogs, allowing four runs over 27 innings for a 1.33 ERA and holding
opposing hitters to a .167 batting average. The team’s bullpen allowed zero
runs over 12.2 innings and registered 15 strikeouts, including seven by Steven
Rodriguez.

Mike Zunino belted a solo homer in the eighth
inning to lift UF to a 2-1 series-clinching victory on Sunday afternoon.
Zunino’s team-leading 13th homer came with one down to move the Gators in front
and Austin Maddox completed a perfect outing by setting down the Bulldogs 1-2-3
in the ninth. Rodriguez produced two scoreless and hitless frames and tallied
three strikeouts. UF’s pitching corps totaled 10 strikeouts and limited MSU to
three hits, a season-low surrendered by the Orange and Blue’s pitching staff.

Graveman and Jonathan Holder combined on a
three-hit shutout as the Bulldogs evened the weekend series with a 2-0 win on
Saturday night. Graveman limited the Gators to three singles over 7.2 innings
to earn the victory, while Holder set down all four hitters he faced to register
the save.

Randall claimed his third-straight start in the
series opener by limiting the Bulldogs to one run and five hits over seven
innings, his longest SEC start of the campaign to that point. Rodriguez hurled
a pair of scoreless innings and registered four strikeouts to collect his third
save as UF handed Bulldog Chris Stratton his first loss since May 21, 2011,
against LSU. Daniel Pigott broke open a 2-1 game with a two-run homer in the
eighth, his seventh round-tripper of the campaign and sixth in league action.